Cablecard 2.0 coming to you HDTV next year

October 19th, 2005 · 5 Comments · gadgets and technology, tv

Zatz reports cablecard 2.0 - which is two way if you’ve been tracking will be ready for deployment next year. Cablecard delivers a superior picture (no cable box compression) and the 2.0 version will give you two-way control so you won’t need a box for VOD or enhanced services if your provider supports this function. It’s also good news for third party DVR makers like TIVO and will hopefully be the path to HDTV on HTPC’s like MCE.

If nothing else this is confirmation that any major HDTV purchase planned should include cablecard support so you (OK, I) can be ready for the near future…

Technorati Tags: DVR, HDTV, MediaCenter, cablecard, TV

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5 responses so far ↓

1 Gary // Oct 20, 2005 at 1:45 pm

Keep in mind, though, that Cablecard 2.0 is not backwards compatible. That is, if you currently have a nice new Plasma TV that supports Cablecard now, it will not work with Cablecard 2.0.

“If you’re thinking of buying a CableCard-ready TV now in anticipation of the time when two-way cards become available, think again. CableLabs, which developed the CableCard spec, says today’s CableCard sets will not be compatible with those cards. And no one is speculating on when two-way cards will happen.” http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,117587,00.asp

Thanks Cablecard. Fuck you.

gf
2 Tech Junky » Atmaspheric >>Cablecard 2.0 coming to you HDTV next year // Oct 20, 2005 at 1:49 pm

[...] The idea that Cablecard 2.0 is coming Cablecard 2.0 coming to you HDTV next year really gets my techie juices jumping. That HDTV could be coming to a Tivo box where I can get HDTV cable gets me all tingly. I know, I know, there a bunch of ways that I could get around this, DirectTV tivo, or straight off of Air. But I do not want to switch to another transport method. I tried DirectTV many years ago and hated it. I just need to hold off a little longer. [...]
3 Jonathan Greene // Oct 20, 2005 at 6:27 pm

Gary -

I was pretty sure what I had read when I posted this was that it was no backwards compatible… at least with one way services, which I took to mean the existing spec.

JG
4 David W. Johnson // Oct 19, 2006 at 12:52 pm

Here is an interesting article on Wired.com about CableCard 2.0

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71682-0.html?tw=wn_technology_6
5 David W. Johnson // Oct 19, 2006 at 1:13 pm

Customer Service at Sharp USA just told me that they do not have a version 2.0 CableCard and, thus, they cannot test it in any of their models and they cannot engineer CableCard 2.0 capability without a CableCard 2.0. I wonder if the CableCard Generation 2.0 actually exists as I write this? FWIW I will wait for CableCard 2.0 capability before I purchase an HDTV.